The power of storytelling
Well, I didn’t expect that! To get an endorsement of my personal modus operandi amongst my serious study books! But hey ho … there it was:
Story is the precious gift that thrusts spirituality from the theoretical and into the grit and honesty of the everyday world.
In Praying like Monks, Living like Fools, Tyler Staton uses stories to trace his own growth and journey from a thirteen-year-old lad pacing round his school premises praying for his classmates, to his present life as the lead pastor of a church in Oregon and director of the 24-7 Prayer movement in the USA. And that connection with real life experiences – his own and others’ – certainly made his philosophising more palatable and compelling for me. And it made his book stand out amidst the stack I’ve been ploughing through on the topic of prayer, some of them definitely not for the faint-hearted it has to be said!
It also reminded me of my own early days of lecturing, forty years ago. I quickly became aware of the appeal of a story in getting an audience listening and engaging. And as an empirical researcher in medical ethics, out in the real world listening to real people grappling with very troubling issues, I had a veritable wealth of stories coming my way (suitably anonymised, of course).
It was also what drove me to write a series of novels set in the world of medical ethics. By entering into the lives and emotions of fictitious characters, the reader is challenged to contemplate the important questions of right and wrong, interests and responsibilities, in a meaningful way. All the principles and theories and esoteric jargon can be horribly off-putting; woven into and interpreted through relatable life and suddenly everyone gets it, and most people have a viewpoint.
Stories open so many doors.